EP.47: Healing from Within: How to Navigate Emotional Pain and Trauma
Show Notes
What does it mean to truly heal from within?
I'm taking you on a journey into the heart of navigating emotional pain and trauma. It's about more than just overcoming; it's about acknowledging, feeling, and transforming these deep emotions. From the pangs of rejection to the shadow of abandonment, we'll explore how to confront and comfort these feelings, rooted in our need for connection.
Together, we'll learn to listen to our bodies, recognise the whispers of our emotions, and gently guide ourselves towards healing and self-compassion. This is a path not just to recovery, but to discovering the strength and resilience that lies within us all.
Here are the highlights from this episode:
02:32 - What does healing from within mean?
10:01 - How understanding your emotions can help in self-healing
13:17 - Practising emotional healing
15:22 - Dealing with rejection and abandonment
18:20 - Addressing the feeling of disconnection through self-reflection and self-compassion
LISTEN HERE OR ON YOUR FAVOURITE PODCAST APP
Resources:
Join my fearlessly curious community and SIGN UP to my Fearlessly Authentic Living Newsletters for reflections, contemplations and support you won't find anywhere else.
If you enjoy this episode, please SHARE, RATE and REVIEW the show on Spotify or Apple Podcasts.
About Me:
I help you lead with fearless authenticity by smashing the self-imposed heteronormative stereotypes that keep you playing small through emotional healing inner child and inherited intergenerational trauma. Create a purposeful life of your unique design by disrupting societal norms and expectations of who you should be. Explore mindfulness, fearless curiosity and loving kindness through the lens of Human Design to thrive as the person you are born to be.
Learn more about my coaching method and join my emotional healing, mindfulness, and music community at melissaindot.com.
TRANSCRIPT
[00:00:00] Healing from within is really about getting to know how you work, how your body works. It's about getting connected with how your body feels. It's about getting to know your own emotions.
[00:00:22] Hey there. Welcome to the Fearlessly Curious podcast. Your safe space to listen, lean in, and learn the diversity of human experiences through the lens of fearless curiosity. When we learn more about each other, We also learn more about ourselves. How? Because when we listen to each other's curiosities and experiences, we relate to that which is in common, and that which sets us apart, gives us something to reflect on.
[00:00:53] We learn through and with each other. I'm grateful to you, the global community, for your curious questions. The Fearlessly Curious Podcast cannot exist without you.
[00:01:09] Welcome to another episode of the Fearlessly Curious Podcast. This week our topic is healing from within. So I'm changing things up just a little bit, it is a solar episode, and this time I've unearthed on my social media platforms for your requests. So I've given this topic, healing from within, and I've asked, what is it that you'd like to know about healing from within?
[00:01:34] So of course, the first prompt was, what does it mean? What does healing from within mean? And the second query is, how do we heal from within? Our fears around rejection and abandonment, or how do we heal from feeling rejected and abandoned? So let's get straight in there. And I want to just prepare you because I'd like for you to grab a pen and paper.
[00:02:01] I'm going to have some prompts for you today, and we're going to treat this like a live session together where I talk through the specific challenges. I'll share with you my personal experience, and then I'll give you some prompts for you to dive into and try things out for yourself. And obviously have the opportunity then to either send me through direct messages on different social media platforms, what your responses are to the prompts, or you can email me or you can come into the online platform and message me there.
[00:02:32] So let's start healing from within. What does it actually mean? We live in a world where we are conditioned, we're taught, right, that when we have a problem, when we have a struggle, when we have an illness, when we have a sickness, when we're confused, when we're lost, When we're feeling out of sorts in any shape or form, the first thing that we do is we seek help.
[00:02:56] And what does that help look like? Typically, if it has to do with our health, we go to a medical professional. We seek help from a doctor. Let's say it's a cold, it's a cough. That would be the usual thing that we do. And that's the way the world has been built. People choose careers, they specialise, they study, they become experts in whatever field, whatever their chosen field is, in particular in terms of health, okay?
[00:03:26] So, for clarity, I want to make sure, this is a disclaimer, it's a very important disclaimer, because in no way am I saying today, in this episode, that we do not seek the help of medical professionals. Medical professionals are there for a reason, they have dedicated their lives to learning about how the body works, how the mind works, how the heart works.
[00:03:47] In particular in health, and that is their function, that is their purpose for us to go to them. Healing from within is really about getting to know how you work, how your body works. It's about getting connected with how your body feels. It's about getting to know your own emotions. Because that's not something we are taught, and we're typically not given a professional to go to, to support us when it comes to emotional healing.
[00:04:21] Yes, there are therapists, yes, there are counsellors. Yes, there are healers out there too, and there are a whole plethora of practitioners out there who are incredible in the work that they do. So whether it's conventional doctors treating mental health or physical problems, or whether they are trained therapists, certified coaches or counsellors and facilitators within that arena, we still have the opportunity to reclaim some of our own power, to begin our healing process from within ourselves, from getting to know how our bodies feel, what our emotions are, and what our thought processes are.
[00:04:57] Because when we seek advice externally, we're always going to get a second opinion, a third opinion. And sometimes we may call it a first opinion, meaning the first person I go to, that's the first opinion.
[00:05:20] But the truth is, it's the first opinion about how I feel is the opinion I hold. It's the point of view I hold. So because we've been conditioned to constantly seek help and support externally, what we've done is we've lost connection with our own empowered awareness of how we feel physically, what we think of mentally, and the frequency of our emotions, how we feel on an emotional level.
[00:05:51] We give away our power. We tell doctors, we tell therapists, counsellors, and coaches, these are our symptoms. I feel sad, or I have a pain in my neck, right, or I have an ache in my tummy, or I have a sniffling nose, please prescribe me something. That's the way that we've been conditioned. But when we come from a place of awareness and empowered awareness where we begin our healing process from within ourselves, the first step we take is to sit with how we feel.
[00:06:23] So let me give an example of a basic headache. I have a headache. So there are a couple of things I could do. I could call my doctor and say, I need to come and see you. Can I make an appointment? I have a headache. I could Google it. Good old Google, and read up and research and see what my symptoms are and how they align with what's online and what the advice is online.
[00:06:44] I could reach to a perfectly acceptable medication that I can get off the shelf in any pharmacy or even supermarket these days, or I could sit with myself. I could analyse, tune in and ask myself, what am I feeling this headache? Where am I feeling it? Am I feeling it on the front of my head? Am I feeling it on the back of my head?
[00:07:12] Am I feeling it on the side of my head? And then I'm going to go into further detail. If it's on the front of my head, are my eyes affected? If it is on the side of my head, what is the sensation that I'm feeling? And do I feel clamping? Maybe on the back of my head. Do I feel that pain, that ache, fall and extend down to my neck?
[00:07:33] Maybe my shoulders? So as I build that awareness, I build the picture, and I bring attention to my body, because that's really what healing from within stems from. Healing from within, the foundation of healing from within, comes from. It's about loving kindness. It's about bringing attention to what doesn't feel right, where the discomfort is.
[00:07:55] Once we start to bring attention to those areas, we can start to bring breath to those areas. Most of the time, the majority of the time, in a particular headache, when we have a headache, it's because there is tension in our bodies. Maybe even hyper focusing on the phone, hyper focusing in front of the computer.
[00:08:13] Maybe we're mentally stressed about something, perhaps we are so hyper focused on something and stressed that we've forgotten to hydrate, that we're not breathing well, we're not breathing deep. In fact, perhaps we're holding our breath. Science has shown that in many cases when we're very stressed or when we're hyper focusing on something, we actually hold our breath, we don't breathe.
[00:08:34] So there's a lack of oxygen to the brain and there's a lack of oxygen in our entire system. So our blood is not delivering enough oxygen to the body, and so things become clogged. So let's step back again. You have an ache, you have pain, you have discomfort, on a physical level, on a physical level. So rather than go into your automated strategies of calling the doctor, reaching for, you know, painkillers, sit with yourself.
[00:09:00] Bring loving awareness and kindness to how you're feeling on a physical level. Talk to yourself. Bring attention to yourself. Because when we bring attention to ourselves, that's self love, that's self care. Start to track it. Notice how you're feeling. Then, second step. So first is awareness. The second step is to track what your activities were up until you started to feel that headache.
[00:09:24] Was I on the computer? What time have I been on the computer since? Am I reading something? How long has my head been down? When was the last time I had a meal? When was the last time I had a glass of water? What's going on in my life right now that might be causing me to have a headache? So the healing from within, once again, it's about going inward.
[00:09:44] It's about self inquiry. It's about taking ownership of what your current state is knowing that you can shift that through curiosity and awareness. And let's go into emotional healing now. Okay. Now we're not taught about our emotions. We're never taught about emotions in fact. And so this becomes entirely and wholly our responsibility to begin the practice of learning what our emotions are.
[00:10:13] So with emotions, we practise the same strategy. Three different steps we take. The first thing is to sit with the emotion that you're feeling. Sit with it. Find a quiet space and tune in to how that emotion is showing up in your body. You might say, well, I feel angry. Sit with the anger. How does the anger look like?
[00:10:37] Oh, it's making me feel hot. Right? It's making my eyes feel tight. It's making it feel tight in my chest. And I promise you, as you start to bring awareness to the physical symptoms of your emotion of anger, the same process begins. You are giving and bringing. loving attention to your emotional state. You are bringing awareness to your emotional state, and that is bringing you into the present moment, into the here and now.
[00:11:09] Because often when we feel angry, we're in the story, we're all about what has made us angry, that person in front of me, that person who was rude to me, right? Whatever it is, we get into the story of the emotion, but when we're healing from within, what we want to do is become now you get in the present moment.
[00:11:28] We want to tune into what is true here and now within ourselves, within ourselves. What is happening on a physical level? What is the real experience? So, because you can name the emotion, and because we're not taught this, many of us are very limited with the ability to name what our emotions are. We're happy, we're sad, we're angry, right?
[00:11:51] If you need support on this, you can Google the emotion wheel. You can find it online. It's available everywhere. Or, if you need it from me, I can make it available to you. You can grab it by messaging me in the DMs and the social media platforms, getting into the online community, the Mindfulness Playground, or sending me an email.
[00:12:09] All the information you'll find in the notes of the past. Okay, so the emotion wheel, if you need. some support on some of the basic emotions that we tend to experience during our lives. It's sadness, anger, these are typical, happy, frustrated, bitter, okay? Those are a handful that you could start with. So I want to try it back again.
[00:12:33] I'm feeling this emotion. I'm going to create a space, the space to sit with it. And I'm going to start bringing attention to how that emotion feels in my body. Tightness in my stomach. Butterflies in my tummy. My shoulders are tight. My throat is dry. I feel heated. My breath is short. Okay, so name the symptoms, then name the emotion.
[00:12:55] This is anger. This is what I'm feeling right now. Going inward, connecting with the body, landing and anchoring in the present moment. Now, the next step, track what happened before. It's very important to focus on facts. We like to say that a person may be angry. We like to externalise everything. We like to blame, actually put the finger of blame.
[00:13:19] And we can do that. But the truth is, Blaming someone is not going to help you feel less angry because we can't change that person's behaviour. What we can change is the way that we perceive that behaviour. It's what we do with that behaviour. What can we do with that circumstance? What can I do with this emotion right now?
[00:13:37] And the most important thing for me to do is to feel it because we have to feel it, to heal it. Emotions are energy in motion. You literally feel it. It's an energy. It's in your physical body. You can't just cut it. Many of us try to do it. We try to suppress it, we try to avoid it, we try to numb it with drugs, alcohol, with sex, with being busy, with all sorts of things.
[00:13:59] The only way out is through it. First step, create the space, give it the attention, name it, and start to describe how it feels in your body. The second step, continuing your journey inward, trace. What things happened just before you started to feel angry, name facts. I walked into the door. I dropped my glass.
[00:14:33] When I dropped my glass, somebody reacted. When that person reacted, this is what they said. When they said these words, this is when I started to feel the sheet of anger begin in my body. It is a practice, my friends. It will take time. I promise you, I need you to save this episode and come back to it again.
[00:14:55] Bring awareness, trace the steps of the emotion. Just with those two steps alone, you will start to feel the energy of that emotion dissipate. Let's begin there. And I look forward so much to hearing from you in my DMs and in email when you practise this, what the response to your prompts are. That is what healing from within is all about.
[00:15:22] And that is how you begin. How do we deal specifically with rejection and abandonment? This is something that I definitely hold close to my heart. As human beings, we long for human connection. That is how our lives began. We began within our mothers wombs. We were attached and entangled with our mothers.
[00:15:45] So, in essence, feeling rejected and abandoned at some level is going to be something that we all experience, because we came from connection, and we came from entanglement. Um, and when there is that separation that happens, it's almost inevitable that we will feel rejection and abandonment. This is a very big topic, so just to cover, just to touch on it for now, and if those of you want me to go deeper with it, then once again, I invite you to reach out to me, ask me for, to make a podcast episode specifically on this.
[00:16:22] But the first step I would take is... Once again, to name it, I feel rejected. Where does that rejection show up in my body? Even now, as I'm speaking to you, when I remember what it's like to feel rejected, I feel heavy. I feel sleepy. My body wants to shut down. I don't want to face this feeling. There is an emptiness in my belly.
[00:16:47] My heart feels... void, and I want to isolate. So when I feel rejected, I want to amplify that feeling of rejection by isolating me even more. And the next step to take is to ask myself, what is it that I need? Because I can't change what that person did. And I also cannot change how I perceive that situation to be.
[00:17:09] Right? Perhaps that person didn't reject me, but somehow, for some reason, because of my memories, because of my trauma, it feels like rejection. And that feeling is real. It's real because it's in the here and now for me. So how can I learn to console myself? So the first step is to validate that feeling, right?
[00:17:27] Name it. You describe what's going on in the body. Validate the feeling in you because it's real and true. The next question is. How can I console myself, not make myself feel better, but console? How can I bring some comfort to myself? How could I, how could I start to ease the pain of rejection? Now what I do is, I imagine, I look in the mirror actually, and I imagine that I'm looking at the child's version of myself.
[00:17:54] I imagine if this were a child I was with, how would I console, how would I comfort? A little child gives the conclusion of who feels hurt, that feels rejected. And I would ask, what do you want right now? What do you want right now? And more often than not, especially if you're new to this practice, you won't have an answer.
[00:18:13] Don't give up. Look in the mirror and ask gently and tenderly, what do you need right now? And if you don't have an answer, stay present with yourself. Because more often than not, what we need when we feel disconnected is connection. So when you stand in front of the mirror, when you look at yourself, You are already connecting when you are asking that question of care and love, giving that attention with loving kindness.
[00:18:43] You are providing the remedy, the balm that you need to soothe you from your rejection. Not a lot is required. Not a lot of action is actually required for all. They're very simple steps of learning how to hold space for yourself, being present with yourself, sitting in the discomfort and accompanying yourself through the discomfort.
[00:19:07] What do you need? Take a breath. What do you need? We often need just to be seen, to be heard, to be felt, to be witnessed. And you can do this for yourself. And as you practise this, as you get better at this, you could always come back to this video and look at me asking you. I know you feel rejected. I know you feel the pain and discomfort in your body and all the places that you've named.
[00:19:39] I'm here with you right now. Tell me, what is it that you need? And if you don't know what you need right now, that's okay. I'm going to stay right here with you. I am here. You matter. You are here for you. You belong right here at this moment. And you are included. You are here with you. And I am here with you.
[00:20:07] And when you gain the clarity of what you need, just write it down. And when you're ready, we can start to take steps towards providing yourself with whatever it is that you need. Okay, my friends. So healing from within, just a little overview and summary of what it means, how to start it, and how to address feelings from within, particularly with rejection.
[00:20:34] You can apply this exact process with the feeling of abandonment. So to recap, these prompts that I've given you, try it, send me your responses, email me, I will respond to you, ask me questions, if you need support, ask me. I'm there for you, either in the DMs of the social media platforms, Instagram, YouTube, LinkedIn, TikTok, or get on the online platform, the Mindfulness Playground.
[00:20:59] If you haven't joined it yet, check out the link below. And of course, you can email me, get on the newsletter and email me. I am there for you. We are here together being fearlessly curious so we can together learn more about ourselves and each other and create a life that is thriving through love, awareness, and loving kindness.
[00:21:22] Until next week, my friends, stay fearlessly curious.
[00:21:33] If you want more, make sure to subscribe so you never miss a new episode every Friday. And please leave a review if you enjoy this episode. Don't forget to send me your curious questions and experiences as inspiration for future episodes. Your anonymity will be respected if that's what you prefer. For more guidance and support, join my emotional healing, mindfulness, and music community over at melissaindot.com
[00:22:01] See you next week!
JOIN MY FEARLESSLY CURIOUS COMMUNITY
SIGN UP to my Fearlessly Authentic Living Newsletters for reflections, contemplations and support you won't find anywhere else.